The website of Christopher Iacono

National Poetry Writing Month

As some of you may know, April is National Poetry Writing Month (or NaPoWriMo). For the next thirty days, writers (including myself) will try to write one poem a day (or at least, they will try to write a total of thirty for the month).

Last year, I only managed to write sixteen poems. In the middle of the month, my family and I went to Walt Disney World. (Even though Disney World is the happiest place on Earth, it’s not the best place to write poetry.)

Also, April tends to be a busy time of year at my day job, and this year is no exception. Oh yes, and my son’s birthday is also during that month.

So even though I’m gearing up for another busy April, I’m going to really try to write thirty poems this year. My family and I did this year’s Disney trip in February, so that won’t get in the way of my goal.

Although I’m hoping to write thirty poems this year, I don’t expect many of them to be ready to submit for publication. (If I’m lucky and have a few good days, maybe I’ll be able to submit two or three. Maybe.) But I am hoping that about five or six of them have enough potential to workshop them on Scribophile.

I don’t really have a strategy this year. I was originally going to use a series of architectural photos as prompts, but I decided to nix that idea. (Even though “The Price Tower” and “Iconic” were both inspired by architectural photos, I realized that using them for a whole month might get boring.)

Fortunately, there are plenty of places to find ideas. There’s the official NaPoWriMo website, which offers prompts each month. Using the #napowrimo on social media will also help poets find prompts. (Speaking of social media, lately I’ve been inspired by the Brooklyn-based Yes, Poetry’s prompts on Twitter. You can follow them at @yespoetry.)

Are you participating in NaPoWriMo? What are you using for prompts? Tell me about them in the comments.